Remembering 9/11's Low-Wage Victims
Published September 11, 2009 @ 09:55AM PT
I came to my work in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast in part because I worked with survivors of the terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I worked for a non-profit, Seedco, that ran the Lower Manhattan Small Business Recovery Program - providing grants, loans and technical assistance to small businesses around Ground Zero. We were intimately and intensely involved with assisting commercial residents rebuild their livelihoods and their futures.
Frequently covered in the press since that horrific day 8 years ago are the families of the financial titans or workhorses who were killed in the building fires and collapse. Less frequently heard from are the survivors of the thousands of low-wage workers who supported the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) industry most associated with the World Trade Center. As we remember and grieve, I ask us to honor the restaurant workers, livery drivers, janitors and other low-wage workers who were disproportionately economically devastated by the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
According to the Fiscal Policy Institute in NY, 9/11 triggered more than 100,000 job losses, about 3/4 due to layoffs from the subsequent recession. 60% of those layoffs were in low-wage industries - the average wage of a laid-off worker had been about $11/hour. When we first began offering small grants and loans to businesses with fewer than 50 employees, we found an overwhelming need among livery drivers, who had relied on long hours and late nights at the finance companies in the WTC for their livelihood. Our partners in Chinatown, Asian-Americans for Equality, created special assistance programs for low-wage garment workers there, who were facing reduced hours across the board rather than mass layoffs, creating economic hardship nonetheless.
Perhaps most famous were the restaurant workers who lost colleagues from the Windows on the World bar and restaurant on top of the WTC, who organized and opened their own restaurant in the years following 9/11. Today, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of NY is an advocacy organization with 2,200 members and offices in New Orleans and other cities nationwide.
But how many other workers have we lost track of, how struggled through that recession, who looked for new work as garment jobs and finance jobs moved out of NYC, into NJ, overseas? How many had to cope with mental trauma on top of figuring out how to make ends meet, how to care for their families, how to earn enough to send back home?
Poverty has a cumulative effect, meaning a shock to the system like 9/11 can have a reverberating impact for years to come. Wages lost in those months and years after the attacks set back families immeasurably; communities change (Lower Manhattan is now a thriving, expensive, residential district); households break up; people become homeless.
They also recover, grow stronger, and move on and hopefully, up. Eight years out, with a new Presidential Administration and the fight of our generation for health care and equal economic opportunity, let's pay tribute in our thoughts and actions to those low-wage workers and households who lost their lives, loved ones, and for some, their hope of a better life in the US. And let's also work with them to improve their lives and their life chances in our post-9/11 world.
(Photo of a 9/11 memorial at a restaurant in Queens, home to thousands of low-wage workers, taken by Tony the Misfit)
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Comments (9)
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Author
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Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.
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Powerful post and important message, Leigh. This is something often ignored that needs more exposure.
Posted by Ben Rattray on 09/11/2009 @ 10:20AM PT
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(agrees to the first comment)
Posted by Katja Camrath on 09/12/2009 @ 06:50AM PT
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Important points, Leigh. Thanks for this essay. Ultimately it is always the poor who suffer the most after every devastating event. With wealth being so unevenly distributed throughout the world, it is the poor who struggle so hard for the smallest necessities in life and whose miseries are passed on to the next generation because the injustice remains.The rich maintain their stronghold and power. Unfortunately in America the poor are made to believe that it is simply their own fault, not working hard enough, maker of your own destiny and all. Indoctrination of its worst kind. Just see here on change.org more people are supportive of "animal rights" than of universal health care. Let us hope now at least the poor finally will be able to receive some form of health insurance. The rich are trying their upmost to prevent that too. Good luck in your work. Best wishes!
Posted by B Friendly on 09/12/2009 @ 09:24AM PT
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These are all very good points. Everyone suffers mentally, emotionally, psychologically/psychiatrically. However, the more financial resources you and your family have - and your employer have - the more quickly you and your employer will get back to a fiscal normal and functional barring something like total destuction of something the employer HAD to have to function or that you were totally disabled (but even this points to a disparity in the affordability - and availability - of certain insurance products like proper life and disability insurance). And it's easier for many to get mental, emotional, psychiatric, psychological functioning back to "normal" if normal is brought back around them - meaning stuff like housing and employment as much as possible. Which means years of living on someone's sofa in Timbuktu and being unemployed or looking for a new career you didn't want isn't necessarily a good idea except for maybe some of the world's most resilient and determined survivors.
B Friendly raises some good points too. It also bothers me to see how much more attention is paid even here to ideas like "animal rights" (not that some of what we, even in the U.S. do to animals isn't in need of improvement) rather than to dire suffering of PEOPLE who in many cases are being left to fates most people wouldn't wish upon said animals.
Posted by Danetta Amschler on 09/13/2009 @ 11:31AM PT
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I am also apalled that people who volunteered at ground zero and got sick doing it got no help from government for medical expenses. These are people who layed their life on the line hoping to rescue people alive; also get ground zero ready for rebuilding of World Trade Center.
The terrorist distruction of WTC is and the neglecting of our volunteer rescue workers is another crystal clear indication that the USA healthcare system is broken. When someone becomes sick and can't work he loses his insurance. Medicaid does not provide an instant takeover.
Posted by John W. Knapp on 09/13/2009 @ 08:06PM PT
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Exactly John. And losing your insurance is bad enough WITHOUT suffering a tragedy like the WTC if you have any reason at all to "need" the insurance. Heaven forbid that you're then FORCED to turn to Medicaid and don't have children in the mix because then you're FORCED to rely upon the crap (that's about the nicest word I can use for the upcoming things) called Medically Needy People Medicaid (that is *IF* your state has bothered to opt to offer MNP Medicaid - many don't) or to buy into your state's high risk insurance pool (which is just paying an income dependent premium and copays to use Medicaid and it's not always full Medicaid you're buying into, it's often pared down Medicaid. Add in that if you're childless, they typically require a disability determination and often want that from the Social Security Admin and you might be at the mercy of hoping SOMEONE will give you provisional care for what can be MONTHS to YEARS while you wait for a disability determination so they can make a final decision about your Medicaid. This is how we as a nation effectively force those with disabilities and chronic conditions into permanent disability just so they can get medical care. If they had REGULAR Medicaid, the decision is purely income and asset based and while the income limit is still a a joke (and a twisted one) since the way the Federal Poverty Line is figured is so inaccurate, at least they allow you to work...
And let's hope that on top of all that nothing in the mix involves or provokes a need for mental health care. While states have to provide Public Mental Health (or something that pretends to pass for such), what's covered - if anything - for mental health care is optional, especially in MNP Medicaid. Plus, Public Mental Health is in many locations so badly underfunded that only those with insurance can use it. Welcome to something resembling a bad Twilight Zone....
Posted by Danetta Amschler on 09/13/2009 @ 08:43PM PT
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Great post. It is important to remember that the poor suffered on 9/11, too. Then they suffered because of unequal payouts from the fund.
I have always wondered if homeless people died in the attacks. I hope one day to find out and start a small memorial website for them and those minimum wagers who died or lost friends/loved ones that day.
Posted by Ioan Lightoller on 09/14/2009 @ 07:16AM PT
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Thank you for this post. I know I'm late on reading it, but it had a powerful impact on me nonetheless, particularly considering that I'm a recent college grad looking to start a career in the nonprofit sector. This has inspired me.
Posted by Johannah Oldiges on 09/20/2009 @ 11:16AM PT
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I'm so glad! Thanks so much!
Posted by Leigh Graham on 09/20/2009 @ 11:51AM PT
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